Lauren Hough grew up in the infamous, apocalyptic Christian free-love and -sex cult The Family, formerly The Children of God.
Her pacifist father had joined the cult in 1970 or so to dodge the Vietnam War. At 18, partly to spite her dad, Hough enlisted in the U.S.
Air Force, where she got death threats and her car was set ablaze because she's lesbian. The Air Force court-martialed Hough, accusing her of setting her own car on fire.
The military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, in place from 1994 to 2011, kept her from citing the homophobic death threats in her defense.